One last glimpse of their son, or father, or brother
A Nashville, Tennessee, American Red Cross Chapter Worker describes the hectic days immediately following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Margaret Duffy
American Red Cross Home Service Worker

A Red Cross Field Director provides assistance to a GI on maneuvers.

Everybody was heartbroken about what happened at Pearl Harbor. And we didn't have much time to sit and think. You just kept going, one thing after the other. And Nashville was already surrounded by military... And it meant that troops came here before they were shipped overseas. Well, families then came looking for one last glimpse of their son, or their father, or their brother. And our chapter became a center of all of that activity. They would be on our doorsteps early in the morning. Families-it was children trying to find Private Joe Brown. And the Field Directors with Red Cross were out in the field with the troops. So we would do our best to try to put the two together. But it was a very hard thing because troops were moving all the time... At one time we had 30,000 volunteers working in this area.

Doughnuts and coffee for the troop trains
A Red Cross Volunteer Staff Aide in Nashville, Tennessee, recalls members of the Canteen Service pouring coffee at 6 am and the Production Corps knitting garments... all part of the Red Cross home front war effort.
Elise Steiner
American Red Cross Volunteer Staff Aide

A Red Cross Canteen Corps volunteer pours coffee for GIs on a troop train.

When the trains pulled through... we had groups of women sometimes as early as six in the morning with doughnuts and coffee for these troop trains that came through with no food, nothing, for these service people [moving] from one military facility to another. And it was amazing. The women-I mean, some of these real, real socialites down there at six in the morning peddling the doughnuts. Of course, we weren't selling them. We were handing them out free. But it was quite a deal. And then we had the bandage rollers who rolled all over. Every church and synagogue had corps of women who rolled bandages. And we knitted scarves for the service people, and caps, and sometimes we did layettes and booties for service people's children.

We arranged with the Brooklyn Dodgers to have Red Barber make blood donor appeals
The Communications Director at the Red Cross Blood Center in Brooklyn, New York, tells how the famous baseball announcer helped get blood donations.
Roy Popkin
American Red Cross Brooklyn Chapter

Red Cross blood plasma being loaded on Army plane at Mitchell Field, New York, for shipment to the Pacific.

The name of the game was to get as much blood donated everyday as possible... and there was a great patriotic response. But as time went on you had to maintain this even flow of donors and we arranged with the Brooklyn Dodgers to have Red Barber make blood donor appeals during the broadcasts of the games. And we had a system set up where we had a direct phone line into the press box. And we could... call up and say, Tell Red we need twenty-seven more donors for early morning tomorrow. And he would start working down at twenty-seven. And we kept in touch with him on a number of calls and everything. And it was a fabulous relationship we had with him. He was a remarkable gent. And he felt since he was asking people to give blood, he should give blood himself. And he would come in, give blood, and always faint after he'd given blood. And he was a blond redhead, very pale to begin with. And you couldn't tell he was passing out till he went [laughs]. But it didn't stop him from coming back.

I was assigned to the Liberty Club which was near Euston Station
A Red Cross Recreation Worker describes the services offered American troops at a Red Cross Club in London, England, during wartime.
Lois Laster
American Red Cross Recreation Worker

A Red Cross worker poses with American soldiers at a Red Cross club in London. Photo by Toni Frissell.

I was assigned to the Liberty Club which was near Euston Station. It was on Upper Woburn Place. It had been a hotel at one time and our club was more or less a hotel, still a hotel, because we slept, fed, and housed and programmed all in the same area. We could sleep close to four hundred men in the building... There were usually three women at the club and our duty was to provide programming. We had two tours a day and one of us always went on a tour. We had dances twice a week. One night dance and one tea dance in the afternoon, on Sunday afternoon.

Bobbi, I think you saved my life
A Clubmobile Worker with the troops in Germany tells how important it was "just to listen" to the troops.
Barbara Pathé
American Red Cross Clubmobile Worker

An American Red Cross worker shares a few minutes of conversation with GIs somewhere in France.

We were standing in the village street in a row serving our coffee and doughnuts and I was at the end of the line with the coffee dipper. And a GI came up to me, a very young guy, a 19-year-old, like a lot of them were, and he said his name was Jerry and he just needed to talk to me. And so he stood there and talked to me the whole time we were serving. And the burden of his conversation, or monologue, as it was, was that he wanted to get back into combat. At this point they were on battalion reserve, back a little bit from the foxholes. He wanted to get back because he wanted to get killed. He couldn't take any more... But he had heard during this period that our artillery had been forward into Germany and had picked up some wonderful, beautiful beer steins. The regimental beer steins with all the colorful painting on them. And I said, Oh, I wish I could get one of those! And he overheard this. What happened was that he found a beautiful one when he did go back into the line... And so he grabbed it. Now he's a rifleman. He took this thing clear through till the end of the war and came to me at the end of the war when we were saying goodbye to the division and he had this thing. It looked like a child wrapped in a yellow and white checked tablecloth. And he gave it to me and said, I wanted to give you this, Bobbi, because I think you saved my life. And what that explains is that listening was the biggest thing we did. Nothing else, just listening.

We'd draw straws for the person to take the crumbs
An American prisoner of war in a German camp describes the importance of receiving a Red Cross POW package.
Enso Bighinatti
American Prisoner of War in Germany

Prisoners carrying Red Cross POW packages into Stalag Luft I in Germany.

"We were permitted to receive POW parcels made up by Red Cross. Now, obviously there were logistic problems... So we'd get, maybe, one parcel to split up equally with four people. And then make it last the week or two weeks. It might have been a month, I think. Anyway, that's the way we would split it up. And, as a matter of fact, we'd draw straws for the person to take the crumbs that were left after you split the crackers and everything out on the table. That was a treat [laughs] for the guy that was lucky enough to pull the shortest straw... And cigarettes came with the parcels and became the most valuable thing in a prison camp. It was used as a monetary exchange. I mean, even making deals with the guards... Cigarettes helped save our lives, frankly, in those days."

The Himalayas: the most dangerous place in the world to fly
A Red Cross Recreation Worker serving airmen in India describes what it was like to "fly the Hump" over the Himalayas to and from China.
Helen Thompson Colony
American Red Cross Recreation Worker

This American Red Cross Club is a home-away-from-home for pilots stationed in India.

The Hump is the most dangerous place in the world to fly. It's over... between Burma and India-on the edges of it-and it flies right into China... Enemy fire and flying conditions, believe me... we used to say we were the forgotten theater. And they were quite right. Because there wasn't any place in the world that was more treacherous to fly than that Hump. And it's huge. And the highest mountains in the world are there. And Mother Nature didn't always cooperate. Most of the time those men had to fly on instruments because the clouds would come down right over you. And we had many, many men go down. It was very bad... We lost thousands of men flying the Hump. And so Red Cross worked very hard to help keep their spirits up.

Some of these girls truly thought it was going to be Hollywood and Times Square
A Red Cross Worker tells what it was like bringing War Brides to America at the end of the war.
Helen Thompson Colony
American Red Cross Recreation Worker

A Nutrition Service volunteer at an American Red Cross chapter instructs a group of War Brides on how to shop wisely in a U.S. supermarket.

Those girls came from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the Isle of Man. I mean, some of those girls had been married previously to, like, RAF pilots and the guys were dead. So when our GIs got over there, they didn't waste any time. They saw these pretty girls and they married them. We had girls that came on board with as many as six children, three of whom belonged to an RAF pilot that died and the other three were American kids. So they just combined forces. Most of them only had one or two but we did have as many as six in some cases... There were better than a million war brides came here after World War II. They had ships all over the world bringing them in. . . . Some of these girls truly thought it was going to be Hollywood and Times Square. They didn't realize, quite honestly, who they married, where they were going to live, or what was going to happen to them. One girl especially, I will always remember her. She was a lovely young girl. She had three children. One day she came to Mickey and to me... She said, I want to show you a picture I've got. And here it was the outside of Washington's home in Mount Vernon [Virginia]. And here this GI is standing at the front door. And she said, when my folks saw that I was going to live in a house that grand, she said, everybody gave me their best linens, their best silver, their best everything. And so we're going to have a very fine home. And I looked at that and I remember saying to Mickey, That looks to me like Mount Vernon. And so then she said, Let's call Patty. And so we called Patty because she was handling all the girls that were going into Tennessee... Oh, my God, Helen, she said, she's going up into the mountains, she said, where, really, there are poor cabins and some places they actually have cardboard and papers up for protection at the windows. And I said, I think you'd better get to this girl and talk to her because [Mount Vernon] is where she thinks she's going to live.

They had had no medical care for four years in the prisoner of war camps
A Home Service Worker describes Red Cross services to the American prisoners of war as they waited in the Philippines for transport home after the war.
Margaret Duffy
American Red Cross Home Service Worker

Released American prisoners of war in Manila reading Red Cross messages from home.

I was sent to the 29th Replacement Depot where all the American prisoners of war were brought from Japan and Korea by ship and processed. . . . They had had no medical care for four years in the prisoner of war camps. They'd had no mail from home from their families. Children born that they had never heard of. And the Red Cross had charge of operating that camp from the standpoint of recreation and communications. Well, the chapters back home were notified to collect letters from the families of the prisoners of war and they were flown to Manila and brought out to the 29th Replacement Depot. So we delivered the letters from home. For the first time they'd had communications since their imprisonment. They were all suffering from beriberi, malnutrition but they were free and nothing takes the place of that! . . . We spent hours talking and mostly listening to their stories over and over. And with the letters and the pictures, we saw thousands, you know, twenty-seven thousand men through there, or more.

The military truly needs Red Cross
A Red Cross Recreation Worker in India sums up the value of the American Red Cross to the fighting men.
Eve Lewis
American Red Cross Recreation Worker in India

A Red Cross worker shares a laugh with GIs recuperating in an American military hospital overseas.

I think the very fact that young women were in that club was an inspiration to the GIs that came in because it always would connect them with their own life at home and they all looked forward to going back home to somebody. . . . The military truly needs Red Cross. They need that civilian touch. . . . It was really very meaningful and it was very interesting to me throughout my career as a volunteer in the Far East, how much respect we received from the military, how much respect from the GI, the sailor, always the enlisted men. It was just thrilling to see how they treasured the Red Cross women who were in their midst.